


Carry Me Down

by Ludwiggle73



Series: The Sad Dad Collection [7]
Category: Hetalia: Axis Powers
Genre: Alpha/Beta/Omega Dynamics, Angst and Hurt/Comfort, Domestic Disputes, FACE Family, Implied/Referenced Cheating, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-08-29
Updated: 2020-08-29
Packaged: 2021-03-07 00:33:32
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,104
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26178025
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Ludwiggle73/pseuds/Ludwiggle73
Summary: Gilbert goes to the Bonnefoy household for dinner.
Relationships: England & Prussia (Hetalia), England/France (Hetalia)
Series: The Sad Dad Collection [7]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1092324
Comments: 9
Kudos: 37





	Carry Me Down

**Author's Note:**

> I started writing this months ago and finally thought of an ending today, so if you can tell - sorry :p

Gilbert knows something’s wrong as soon as he pulls into the empty driveway. The car clock is a few minutes fast, but still. It’s after five o’clock. Francis got off work half an hour ago, and he’s not home. _Maybe they changed plans and forgot to tell me._ They invited him over a week ago, after all, to make up for the last botched attempt to eat together. Perhaps this is just a misunderstanding.

He walks up to the door, but he doesn’t have to knock. He can already hear the pups squalling inside. He pauses a moment, to brace himself, then steps in and calls, “Hallo!”

There’s a split second of silence, and then the squeals go shrill enough to make him wince:

_“Unca Gil!”_

_“Unca Gil’s here!”_

_“Hi!”_

The twins come barreling into the hall, Matthew skating in fuzzy socks and Alfred slap-happy barefoot. They hug a leg each, but Matthew’s quicker to the draw at holding his arms out for _up._ Gilbert lifts him and smiles at them both. “Did you guys miss me or something?”

“Yes, dummy!” Alfred says, smacking Gilbert’s knee for emphasis.

“Don’t hit!” Matthew takes his thumb from his mouth so he can frown down at his brother. “That’s timeout. And dummy is a bad word.”

“Easy,” Gilbert says, before they can get too riled. “Let’s just make an exception this one time. It’s hard to hurt my feelings, don’t worry.” He ruffles Alfred’s hair. “Where’s your dam?”

“The kitchen,” says the alpha pup, and proudly leads the way there.

Arthur has been stay-at-home since the pups were born, and Gilbert has often been tempted to ask what it is he does all day when he visits a house with toys and food coating every surface. But today, everything he can see is spick-and-span. Arthur is still cleaning right now, in fact; he has the contents of the freezer in the sink and is chipping at a chunk of ice with a fork. He spins when Gilbert steps in, wielding it like a weapon.

“Woah,” Gilbert says. “I’m not a burglar, I promise.”

Arthur deflates a bit, but not completely. Never completely, when there are eyes to watch him. “Francis isn’t with you?”

Gilbert shakes his head, trying to keep his expression light.

Arthur shakes his head, too, and hacks at the ice more violently than before.

Gilbert herds Alfred out of the splash zone of ice chips and offers, “I could do that for you, if you wanted to get started on dinner.”

“Dinner?” Arthur looks over his shoulder. Gilbert does not like that light in his eyes. “I have no idea what to make for dinner. I could never have dinner again and be perfectly content with my life.”

Gilbert wants to tell him not to talk like that in front of the pups, Matthew especially, but he doesn’t. The little omega in his arms looks between them with wide violet eyes, so Gilbert smiles, playing it off. _Where the hell are you, Francis?_

“I know! I know!” cries Alfred. “Hamburgers for dinner!”

Arthur stares down at his child as if he’d forgotten he lived here. “You want hamburgers?”

_“Hamburgers! Hamburgers!”_

Matthew turns to Gilbert during the chanting and whispers, “I like hamburgers.”

Gilbert inclines his head to this weighty secret and whispers back, “Me, too.”

Arthur observes them all, then tosses the fork into the sink and shoves the freezer shut. “Alright. We’ll have hamburgers, then.”

So Gilbert sits at the table, entertaining the pups and watching Arthur. He wants to help, but he knows he’d just be snapped at. The English omega’s every move is vicious: yanking the fridge open, snatching what he needs from the shelves, kicking it closed, pounding the beef into patties. Matthew startles at first, but Gilbert tickles him and soon both pups are giggling again. Arthur looks over at them in that moment, and Gilbert wishes he could just—soothe.

It’s probably just the alpha instincts talking. They’ve never been the type of friends who touch. He can’t even remember the last time he had physical contact with Arthur. And maybe that’s a good thing. He’s another alpha’s mate, after all. Gilbert has seen fights break out over accidental touches, let alone purposeful ones. 

Matthew slides off Gilbert’s lap and tugs on Arthur’s shirt. “Daddy?”

Arthur looks down at him. Gilbert has never seen him look so tired.

Matthew looks up with that face, open and innocent. “Can I have bacon on mine?”

Oh, the defeat in Arthur’s shoulders. Gilbert can’t take it. He sets Alfred down and stands up. “I’ll fry it.”

Arthur doesn’t fight him. Doesn’t make any snide remarks. Just goes back to pulverizing the meat and says, “Thank you.”

Gilbert ends up supervising both frying pans, the burgers and the bacon, while Arthur sets the table. In the corner of his eye, Gilbert sees him hold a plate over the spot at the head of the table, then set it down firmly. He cranes his neck to look out the window, but there’s no sign of Francis. Where in God’s name is he, while his mate is here disintegrating? And how many nights has this happened, if Arthur is like this—if the _house_ is like this?

They perform their domestic waltz in silence. Arthur throws away the spoiled things in the sink. Gilbert puts the food on the plates. Arthur pushes Matthew’s chair in, then Alfred’s. Gilbert pours them all glasses of water, but hesitates at Francis’s place. Only then, for some reason, does he notice Arthur only has four places set.

“Sit down,” Arthur says. “Before it gets cold.”

So Gilbert sits and eats, even though he’s not very hungry with all this uncertainty in his stomach. He wants to ask, but he can’t yet, not with this wet-eared audience. They keep his mind mostly busy, kicking each other under the table and almost spilling their drinks and talking to him in that strung-together-squeaks way that he will never fully understand. Through it all, Arthur just eats and looks out the window. When Matthew asks him questions, he responds with single-word answers. When Alfred gets ketchup all down his chin, Arthur wipes it up without even scolding him for his sloppiness.

By the time they’re done eating and the dishes are washed, Gilbert is thoroughly unnerved. “You guys wanna watch a movie?” he asks, and the pups tear into the living room, already arguing about which one to pull up on the screen. Gilbert lingers in the kitchen, eyes on Arthur. “. . . How long has it been happening?”

The omega’s head hangs. His chest rises, falls. “I don’t know,” he says, brittle. “Three weeks.”

 _Three weeks._ Three weeks of not knowing when your mate was going to be home, if he even came home for dinner at all. Three weeks of explaining to your pups that everything was fine, even when you didn’t know yourself. Three weeks of curling up in bed alone, waiting for headlights to swipe across the room.

“Arthur,” Gilbert says, soft.

“Don’t.” Arthur rubs savagely at his eyes and glares at him. “Not while they’re awake.”

Gilbert nods. He’ll never forget the image of his dam crying; he won’t put that same memory in the twins’ heads.

They end up watching both movies, the pups on either side of Gilbert while Arthur sits stiffly on the loveseat, holding his elbows. Gilbert wants to invite him to join the couch cuddles, but he knows he’ll refuse.

Alfred is conked out when the second set of credits roll. Matthew is dozing, but lifts his head when Gilbert leans to turn off the TV. He smiles. “Ready for bed, boys?”

“Mmm?” Alfred opens bleary eyes. “Mmnooo . . .”

“Yes.” Gilbert picks them both up, even though it’s hard on his back. He misses the days when he could carry them around in the crooks of his arms. Arthur probably misses those days, too. There was no question where Francis was, back then. “You wanna show me how good you can brush your teeth?”

Teeth are brushed, faces are washed, and—at Matthew’s insistence—a story is read first in English, then translated to German on the fly at the request to _do it the pretty way._ Gilbert’s not sure how pretty it ends up being, but it puts them both to sleep, so he considers it a success. He presses a light kiss to Matthew’s curls, then slips from the room and pulls the door silently shut.

Arthur is standing there. Watching him.

Gilbert puts his hands in his pockets. “Do you wanna talk about it?”

Arthur seems stiffer than a real person ought, more of a cardboard cutout than the omega Gilbert has known for almost a decade. “No.” Each word an eggshell. “I really, really don’t—”

He stops, but it’s too late. His voice has already broken, and with it comes everything else. He’s fought to keep himself composed this long, and now he finally loses. He collapses inward, face crumpling, and tries in vain to hide his suffering behind his hands.

Gilbert has no excuse to deny them anymore. He wraps his arms around Arthur and braces himself, but no protest comes. Arthur doesn’t hit or curse. He just buries his face in Gilbert’s shoulder and, very softly, whimpers.

That’s all it takes. Gilbert picks him up—it doesn’t take too much effort, even after the handful of pounds he put on after his pregnancy—and carries him down the hall, to the master bedroom. He’s only been in here once, when he was borrowing a tie from Francis. It wasn’t dark, then. The house wasn’t silent, then. Arthur wasn’t beneath him on the mattress, mewling and nuzzling a wet face into the scent gland at Gilbert’s neck.

_No._

He knows it’s wrong. He _knows._ But it would be so easy . . .

“Arthur,” he says, and gently forces the omega’s legs to untwine from his waist. “We can’t do this.”

Arthur looks up at him, just the glint of his eyes in the weak hall light. He doesn’t make any of those needy omega noises this time. He just rasps, “Why not?”

“Because.” Gilbert gingerly wipes a tear from Arthur’s cheek with his thumb. “Then we’d be just as bad as him.”

Arthur closes his eyes. When his sigh comes, it’s heavy and ragged with pain. Gilbert knows it hurts; it hurts him, too.

“Can you.” He almost starts when Arthur breaks the silence. The omega doesn’t open his eyes, just swallows thickly and asks, “Can you stay?”

Gilbert looks down at him, imagines what this might look like from the outside. An affair gone south? Failed temptation? Unrequited love? They’re still half-tangled on the marital nest, and though no clothes have come off he can feel both their bodies throbbing, can smell their arousal fading to exhaustion. Gilbert thinks of what Francis might say, when he comes home to find his second best friend spooning his mate. He thinks, too, of what he might like to say in return. And he thinks of his bed in his apartment, empty and cold.

Arthur makes a tiny sound when Gilbert lifts him again, but it’s only so he can free the blankets from beneath him. They don’t undress, just curl together as they are. He’s grateful for that, in a way. It would seem more intimate if they were naked, more obscene if he tried to wear some of Francis’s sleep clothes. This way, it’s . . . them. What are they? Friends?

_Leftovers?_

“I’m glad,” Arthur whispers. He shudders through a breath until Gilbert’s arm comes around him, stabilizing him. “After Roderich—”

Gilbert doesn’t need to say anything to that. His silence grows sharply louder, and Arthur knows.

“I’m glad,” he says, shifting back against Gilbert even though they can get no closer, “it was you.”

Gilbert lets the praise warm him along with the omega’s body heat. He lets himself think, for the first time in a long time, of his discovery of Roderich, the hidden clothes that smelled of someone else, the notes written in someone else’s penmanship, the guilt that hurt one of them too much and the other not enough. For some people, it is just never enough . . .

“Good night,” Gilbert rumbles, and risks a kiss to the nape of Arthur’s neck.

Thankfully, the omega has already slipped away to slumber.

As Gilbert eventually dozes off himself, after night bleeds into morning and his eyes have grown weary of waiting for headlights, it occurs to him that what they are is survivors. _Yes._

He likes the sound of that.

  
  


_The End._


End file.
